


Cat on a Cake

by BlueRoboKitty



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Keith's past speculation, Team Bonding, Team as Family, sheith if you want to interpret it that way, very very slight hint of klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 17:49:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7371619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueRoboKitty/pseuds/BlueRoboKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keith just turned eighteen, and he's probably the least one in the group excited about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cat on a Cake

**Author's Note:**

> Not to toot my own horn or anything, but this fic just killed me with its cute and I am uploading it from beyond the grave.

“Wow, congrats, man! You’re eighteen!”

Pidge had managed to tinker with the Castle’s main console enough to build a program that would track the rotations and revolutions of the Earth in real time. Finally, the Paladins would be able to keep track of how long they’ve been gone. Pidge and the others now stared at the display with a mix of disbelief and wonder, the numbers displaying Earth’s current date.

Considering it was already mid-April, they’d been gone a lot longer than they thought.

“Man, second year is already almost over!” Lance exclaimed. The semester had only just started when they found the Blue Lion and jumped into a strange wormhole to suddenly become defenders of the universe. At least they didn’t have to prepare for finals? But they would definitely all be held back, if not washed out entirely, if they ever went home. Which was an ultra-bummer for Pidge and Hunk who were supposed to be preparing for graduation into the operational field by now.

“Oh, yeah, congrats, Keith,” Lance added as a dry afterthought. “Welcome to official adulthood like the rest of us. What, is your birthday on April Fools? I bet it’s on April Fools.”

Keith ignored Lance entirely as he stared down at the console, unable to believe what he was seeing. His birthday came and went not even a week ago, around the day they had liberated a small desert moon from Galra control, without him ever noticing it. Not that Keith was very fond of birthdays; their coming and going with little reception had been the story of his life growing up.

But… eighteen was supposed to be different. Right?

He started when Hunk gave his shoulder a hearty, almost painful slap. “Awesomesauce,” the Yellow Paladin said with a wide grin. “That means I get to go in the kitchen and whip up an ah- _may_ -zing birthday dinner for you!”

“Hey, hey, and presents!” Lance chimed in, never wanting to be outdone by anybody, not even his best friend. “What’s a birthday without presents?”

“And where are we gonna get presents?” Pidge asked.

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll find _something._ Like a big present planet!”

Pidge snorted, with a half-smile on their round face. “I doubt there’s a present planet, Lance.”

“It’s a big universe.”

“Not _that_ big. At least, not the observable universe set by the quantum equations of – you know what? Never mind.” They pulled up the holographic map of the universe that bathed the control room in a sea of sparkling planets and stars. “Knock yourself out, Lance. Find us a present planet.”

“On it!”

“It’s fine, guys, really,” Keith interjected. “My birthday’s already passed, it’s not a big deal.” He blinked and went silent when the other three gawked at him like he had grown another head.

“That doesn’t make it _fine!”_ Hunk cried, downright scandalized. “It’s your birthday! Your _eighteenth_ birthday, I should add! And we’ve been gone for _months!_ No, no way, man, we’re celebrating!”

“You really don’t have – “

Keith cut off when the larger Paladin placed a thick finger on his lips. “Shhshhshhshh… shush, little kukui nut. Bro, we’re your _friends_ , and we wanna celebrate your birthday with you. Doesn’t matter if it’s a few days late. Besides, April’s not over yet, right? Yeah, if it were already May, it’d probably be a little weird, but we’re still within the appropriate time frame to welcome you to adulthood with a bang. And cake. Oh my God, I just made up this recipe, too, and I’ve been _dying_ to try it for days now. Just you wait, this cake is gonna make. You. _Cry._ From how delicious it is.”

“Yeah!” Lance and Pidge both nodded in agreement, and Keith flushed a little from an embarrassing warmth overtaking him. Over these past months that hadn’t felt like months at all, sure, these guys were kind of his friends now. Teammates. People he could rely on for once. But he never expected to actually get _close_ to them or anything, close enough that they would genuinely _care_ about his birthday.

“Wait, how do you guys even know when my birthday is? I never told any of you!”

Pidge grinned and poked the side of their head. “Eidetic memory. I noticed it on the student roster when I was hacking my way into the Garrison registry. It caught me by surprise because you’re so young. Um, compared to most of the other students.”

“Pidge has it written on the digital calendar here, your name all circled with hearts and stuff,” Lance teased.

“Those aren’t hearts! They’re swirls!”

“Sure, sure.”

“That’s it, I’m erasing your birthday.”

“You can’t erase my birthday!”

“Watch me.”

Hunk teasingly elbowed Keith in the arm. “Uh oh, if you’re not careful, Pidge is gonna steal your spot as Lance’s bicker-buddy.”

“Oh, look at that, Lance has already given me the best birthday present of all: leaving me alone,” Keith replied with a dry smile.

 

* * *

 

They set to work right away. Hunk remained in the kitchen, while Allura helped him gather ingredients for his latest dishes. Coran was, as usual, put off about being undermined in the kitchen again, but when they needed someone to be charge of decorating the dining hall, he was all over that. His food might not have been much appreciated, but his eye for interior design certainly was. There were no balloons or streamers in the Castle so the dining hall was draped with beautiful ribbons instead, yards of a silky-like fabric sparkling in red and purple. A white ribbon hung over the table with the words “Happy Birthday, Keith!” written in both English and Altean.

Lance and Pidge had actually managed to gather presents wrapped in some kind of tinfoil-like substance. “Are you sure this is enough?” Pidge asked. “In my house, you got the same amount of presents as your age. Well, that was also back when I was a kid, and I mostly got money when I got older.”

“Hmm… I got a million presents because _everyone_ in my family had to get me one. It was kinda ridiculous.”

“So you come from a huge family, too, huh.”

“Countless. I hated every Christmas because of all the Thank You cards I had to write the next day.”

“Ugh. Tell me about it.”

They both went silent for a moment. “Do you think Keith ever had a big birthday?” Pidge wondered out loud.

Lance considered for a moment, arms crossed over his chest and his eyes turned toward the ceiling in thought. “I dunno. He said he grew up in foster care, so. I have no idea. But he didn’t seem all the excited about his birthday at all.”

Pidge straightened their glasses as they gazed at the ground. “No. He didn’t.” They started when Lance suddenly made loud sniffling noises. “L-Lance? Are you… crying?”

“I’m sorry,” Lance groaned miserably, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. “Even that stupid mullet head deserves a nice birthday party at least once in his life.”

Pidge giggled.

“What?”

“Heh, nothing. You’re just a really surprising person sometimes, Lance.”

“Um, thanks. I guess.”

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t like Keith didn’t know what they were doing. They literally talked about the whole affair with him in the same room, like right next to them even. So why did they all force him to hang out on the training deck until they were done with the arrangements? A surprise party wasn’t much of a surprise if he was already well aware of their plans.

He thought of passing the time with training like he usually did, but he couldn’t concentrate. His mind kept bringing up the fact that he had a birthday about a week ago, and his teammates were falling all over themselves to celebrate it, belated as it was.

Keith was just… not used to this kind of attention.

“End training sequence.” He pretty much muttered the phrase, but the program was sensitive enough to pick up his voice, and the robot gladiator obediently retreated through a door in the wall. He couldn’t also shake the thought that he didn’t want to show up to his own birthday party covered in sweat. Even Lance wouldn’t do that, and there was no way he was going to sink below that idiot’s level. So he opted to plop down on the bench and play with his bayard nervously back and forth in his hands to keep busy.

“Hey, there.”

Keith didn’t look up, but the bayard went still as Shiro sat down next to him. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you feeling okay?”

Truth be told, it took everything in him not to curl into Shiro like he used to when the world was overwhelming and scary. He wasn't a kid anymore, not according to the calendar, anyway. His question did surprise him, however. “Y-yeah? Why wouldn’t I be? They’re throwing me a party which is, um, nice of them.” His voice didn’t sound all that convincing, not a note of his usual assertiveness. Shiro could always see right through him; Keith simply covered his true feelings out of habit.

The Black Paladin smiled, his dark eyes gentle with understanding. “They really care about you, you know.”

And this time Keith felt his ears burn hot. Those weren’t words he was used to hearing in any context.

Shiro sat back and looked off into the distance at something that happened what felt like a million years ago in an entirely different galaxy. “Do you remember when you were staying with us? And my parents hosted that party for you?”

The Red Paladin smiled back, despite himself, laughing softly and scratching the side of his nose. “Yeah, it was my eighth birthday. It was at that stupid skating rink I loved going to so much, with the moldy carpet and the bathroom that smelled like piss all the time.”

It was the biggest birthday party Keith ever had, and he never had one like it since. All the neighborhood kids had been there, and there had been a huge pile of presents, more presents than Keith had ever seen before and they were _all_ for him. And there had been this massive chocolate cake Mrs. Shirogane had tirelessly worked on herself the night before, all decorated in cat faces and paw prints. Keith at that age was obsessed with cats, more so than the other obsessions boys tended to have back then like superheroes and hover trucks.

“Pretty sure the stuffed animals in that broken crane machine had fleas,” Shiro recalled.

“Heh, we used to dare each other to stick our heads in the prize slot.”

“And _you_ did get stuck! I tried so hard to get you out before that old manager – what was his name? McGregor? – found out and got us in trouble with our parents.”

Keith’s smile faded a little. “Our” parents, Shiro said. He knew what the older pilot actually meant, that he was only generalizing, but it made something squeeze a little in Keith’s chest.

The Shirogane family had been his foster family at the time of his eighth birthday, of the skating rink he and Shiro hung out all the time during the weekends. No foster family had cared for him like the Shiroganes. There had even been talks of adoption, something both Shiro and Keith had really gotten excited about. They would be brothers, finally, actual brothers.

But it was never to be. Shiro’s grandmother had become very sick, and had moved from Japan to live with her oldest daughter’s family. They simply didn’t have the room, or time, for Keith anymore.

Keith looked up when he felt the familiar weight and heat of Shiro’s hand on his head.

“Takashi…”

“It’s a little late, but we are family now, like we were meant to be. And you have more family waiting for you out there. C’mon. They're waiting for you. Let’s go celebrate.”

They had barely walked into the dining hall when they were greeted with a loud chorus of “Happy Birthday, Keith!” Even though he had been expecting it, the sudden warmth that overcame him was a huge surprise.

As was Lance suddenly hugging him, making him go completely stiff.

“Lance, what are – !?”

“Shut up, dude, don’t ruin it,” Lance hissed in his ear.

“Um…” At a complete loss, Keith gave the Blue Paladin’s shoulder a few awkward pats. Lance was softer than expected, a little bony but soft. And he actually smelled kind of nice.

“Okay, man, stop hogging the birthday boy all to yourself,” Hunk interjected, prying Lance off of Keith. “There’s presents to open and cake to be eaten!”

They tugged Keith over to the table and sat him down in head chair, which made him feel slightly weird because this was where the princess always sat. Allura didn’t seem to mind, however. Her blue-magenta eyes were bright with wonder at her first glimpse of a common Earth custom unfolding before her.

Hunk had really outdone himself this time. Alien food, of course, lined the table and looked actually edible and even delicious. Through meals and meals developed from trial and error over the months, the Yellow Paladin had finally managed to recreate alien dishes specifically for the human palate, enough that the taste reminded them of something they would actually eat back home. Keith’s birthday meal, in particular, was decorative and aesthetically pleasing. These dishes were cutely arranged around a bright purple cake decorated with candles and red icing delicately shaped into an “18” and a cat face. Pidge and Lance had managed to pile even more presents on the table. What they all could be and where those two even found gifts concerned Keith just a little. But only a little.

If they were at a skating rink, it would be exactly like his eighth birthday. The happiest birthday he ever had. The year he thought he was going to be adopted.

The entire group sang the birthday song at the top of their lungs and it was pretty horrible, so much that Keith had to cover his mouth to keep from bursting with laughter. Allura’s and Coran’s voices, after practicing so hard so they could get the words perfect, only made it worse. Once again, Lance, refusing to be outdone by anyone, had to sing as loud as inhumanly possible. Pidge, standing next to him, sung through gritted teeth. They broke into cheers when Keith, a little shyly, blew out the candles.

“These Earthling birthday traditions are so marvelous!” Allura cheered as she clapped with the others.

“Back in my day, you had a catch a Naruly by the horns with your hands tied behind your back,” Coran added with a nod. “Otherwise, you haven’t earned your right to age another year. We caught them to shave their horns down. Poor beasts were rarely able to shave it down themselves without hurting something.”

“And… how old are you?” Hunk asked.

“Fifty-six of your Earth years, but I’m only thirty-seven by Altean standards. Well, you try catching a Naruly by the horns with no hands. If we were back on Altea, I’d put Keith through the ringer.”

“I’m so sorry I asked.”

“I knew a fellow who remained twenty-three for five decades! He just thought the Naruly were too cute to fight. He also said twenty-three was a very good age, anyway, and he – “

“Keith?”

Pidge was the first to notice, and then the others quickly followed. Even Coran trailed off in the middle of his story. Keith was the last to realize and only when something wet trailed down his face. “Oh! Uh…” He quickly wiped at his eyes, but the more he tried to hide it, the more his heart clenched in his chest and the more tears squeezed out. God, this was so embarrassing, but also too overwhelming to contain any longer.

“Holy – Keith, are you _crying?”_

Hank asked the rhetorical question that was in everyone’s eyes as they stared at Keith in concern. The Red Paladin sank further back into his chair, covering his face with his hands, trying to will the tears to stop and his heart to stop beating so loudly. Ridiculous. Of course, he wasn’t crying. Not that Keith saw anything wrong with crying in of itself, he was just not a crier. He preferred showing his feelings with his fists, not his tears.

Shiro placed his hand on his head again. "Take your time," he whispered.

Keith shook his head. “It's not... it... Th-this is really good cake." And he hated that he had to choke the words out of his throat despite his efforts to sound as normal as possible.

“You haven’t had a piece yet,” Lance pointed out, and Keith wasn’t sure if it was just the tidal wave of emotion but the Blue Paladin sounded wholeheartedly concerned.

“Y-yeah, well, it’s _that_ good, okay?” Keith shot back, and the snark eased off the embarrassment at least a little bit.

“Okay, dude, when I said the cake would make you cry, I didn’t mean _literally,”_ Hunk remarked as if he now regretted joking about it. “At least, not before you even tasted it.”

“No, no, it’s fine, I like it,” Keith assured him, able to breathe better and wipe the emotion off his face. “The cat’s… the cat’s a nice touch. It’s really, um, cute. Looks like Red.”

Pidge played music from their laptop, electronic pop beats that were the latest hits back home mixing with their mirth and clinking glasses of space juice, and the party was in full swing as they all sat around the table to partake in Hunk’s delicious birthday feast. The cake was sweet and soft and a little gooey, didn’t taste at all like chocolate, and the best Keith ever had. He didn’t cry like Hunk promised he would, but he did smile and he did so this time without the slightest reservation.


End file.
